The Walt Disney Co. has agreed to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stock, in one of the big stories the storm prevented us from reporting when it was announced yesterday. As noted by latimes.com, the deal includes ILM and most everything else from the Star Wars franchise to LucasArts, the company's gaming arm. The story focuses on plans to imbue Disney's theme parks with The Force and on plans to continue the Star Wars film series, but Forbes has word on the gaming implications of this, suggesting that this might make LucasArts' gaming efforts less focused, rather than more. They say Bob Iger indicated PC titles will likely be licensed, and "In its core division, Disney will likely be focusing on social and mobile games based around Star Wars." In the meantime, Star Wars 1313 is still on track, but they also note the complications of persuing other projects gamers dream about: "As for all those other dream titles? Itís more complicated than just Lucas being out of the picture. KOTOR 3 for example is under the license granted to EA/Bioware currently, and after the disaster of The Old Republic, itís hard to imagine them gambling on a game so similar, even if the old ones were classics."

Yeah, when you observe the contrast of Swtor and say GW2's world environments, animation, working systems, and just plain polish it's literally night and day.Anet did this fantastic job creating a beautifully imagined world with amazing art and assets. Hell even look at the true open world of our 7yr old beloved WoW. Even with it's aged engine you can see the difference in talent and design, and i believe pride in their work.

Swtor looks as if it were put together by 7 or 8 different teams with mediocre talent across the board, and little to no communication.

Edit: What i wouldn't give to have Bliz or Anet type talent do a Star Wars or Sci-Fi mmo. Take my money.

There were a small group of people from my old guild that had every intention of coming back to SWTOR when it went F2P. You know, see what some of the patches had improved, finish some storylines, and see some of the new high level content. Even if it meant paying some money to unlock areas, if it was new...that seemed fair enough.

Coming back to this game so that you can have less fun doing the same thing you were doing before makes no sense however. I looked at that FAQ and I remember one word..."limited". Everything was just "limited". Hell, I think it said death was "limited". We all decided just to walk away and let it die. I am sure a few of us will boot it up out of pure morbid curiosity, but nobody is going to stay.

With so many excellent examples in the industry of how to turn a sub-based game into a F2P game, it blows my mind that they apparently have screwed this up. Turbine and Cryptic took their games and actually made them better during the process. I am not seeing how SWTOR has gotten any better.

And have you SEEN their F2P bullshit? F2P characters can't fucking SPRINT until level 15. The whole thing reeks of EAware going "Well FUCK! If none of you will pay for it, then I guess we'll go F2P, but we're gonna fuck you freeloading bastards over every single fucking chance we get!"

I think it was RPS where I saw a quote that basically said "Since you wouldn't pay money for these features, we're going to remove some and somehow that will make it more attractive."

I can just see everyone at Bioware grinding their teeth together when they talk about going F2P, since they obviously figured they were going to be rolling in subscription money.

Funny how if you make a talking MMORPG based around fifteen year old gameplay, it doesn't really sell anymore.

And have you SEEN their F2P bullshit? F2P characters can't fucking SPRINT until level 15. The whole thing reeks of EAware going "Well FUCK! If none of you will pay for it, then I guess we'll go F2P, but we're gonna fuck you freeloading bastards over every single fucking chance we get!"

I think it was RPS where I saw a quote that basically said "Since you wouldn't pay money for these features, we're going to remove some and somehow that will make it more attractive."

Fantaz wrote on Oct 31, 2012, 19:16:"after the disaster of The Old Republic"... so it was a disaster after all?

That caught my eye too. I haven't heard much about TOR recently, which is pretty bad for any game but especially an MMO.

It's going from subscription to F2P in under a year. I'd call that a disaster.

And have you SEEN their F2P bullshit? F2P characters can't fucking SPRINT until level 15. The whole thing reeks of EAware going "Well FUCK! If none of you will pay for it, then I guess we'll go F2P, but we're gonna fuck you freeloading bastards over every single fucking chance we get!"

Nobody at EAware gets it. The point of F2P isn't to be an asshole against free players and to make sure that subscriptions are so much better, the point is to make the free players have fun so that they will WANT to spend money in your shop. Dicking them over with BS restrictions from the get-go, surprisingly, isn't going to do that.

I imagine the die-hard Star Wars fanbase is big enough to pay for the servers to keep running, but I doubt the whole thing is currently doing more than breaking even. I watched my buddy play again for a bit a few days back, and he was walking around completely empty wastelands, even in towns. And he says he's on one of the high population servers.

I bet there's plenty of Star Wars fans at LucasArts and Disney who have very good ideas on how to handle the franchise. It often seemed that Lucas was the only one who didn't get it. You only need to watch some behind the scenes footage of the prequels and Crystal Skull to see how his bad ideas infect the process as everyone else forces a smile and a nod. "Yes whatever you say George, it is after all yours."

So true. Those behind the scenes videos are depressing as hell and make everything so clear.

KOTOR 3 for example is under the license granted to EA/Bioware currently, and after the disaster of The Old Republic, itís hard to imagine them gambling on a game so similar, even if the old ones were classics.

The issue isn't the license or Kotor 3.The issue is EAWare are the McDonald's of games publishing. In and out.If it ain't makin barrels of cash, pull out. There's absolutely no vision or loyalty from the halls of this company.The other issue is Swtor being a giant steaming turd of a game that somehow went horribly wrong during it's development.

Someone sucked someones dick when the "Hero Engine" deal went down.Their entire art and design teams are made up of ITT tech drop outs.And the folks running it now are just a rag tag team of nobody's who don't have the first damned clue about vidja game design or even common sense.

For instance when you have a team announce one of their F2p limitations will be to limit the user's spell/quickbar to just ONE bar(while subscribers get 4)you simply know that team's round table is full of soap eating zombies who need to lay the crack pipe down.

It's sad because the game has a decent base, and does have potential, but these folks appear determined to destroy it.

The issue is not the license or Kotor 3, the issue is bigger than that.

Jackplug wrote on Nov 1, 2012, 00:32:Disney and violent starwars will now be a kiddie wink special, no killing and a teen heart throb as 2nd lead actor and music by some teen band. Disney will murder starwars, if anyone thought Phantom Menace was bad wait to you see what Disney will do with it.

You are soooo right. I mean, Avengers was nearly a chick flick. No action, no violence, characters totally castrated. The casting was atrocious. They should have just had Miley play the Black Widow and make the corruption complete. Disney is just killing Marvel, I am sure that is exactly what will happen to Star Wars.

Disney and violent starwars will now be a kiddie wink special, no killing and a teen heart throb as 2nd lead actor and music by some teen band. Disney will murder starwars, if anyone thought Phantom Menace was bad wait to you see what Disney will do with it.

I bet there's plenty of Star Wars fans at LucasArts and Disney who have very good ideas on how to handle the franchise. It often seemed that Lucas was the only one who didn't get it. You only need to watch some behind the scenes footage of the prequels and Crystal Skull to see how his bad ideas infect the process as everyone else forces a smile and a nod. "Yes whatever you say George, it is after all yours."

At least we know there will be a lot of new Star Wars movies made and it could be sweet from the amusement park angle. Unfortunatly I think this could be the final nail in the coffin for Star Wars video games.

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 31, 2012, 16:56:Pre-production for Episode VII has already started. They released the first photo from the set yesterday, where George Lucas denied reports that the new trilogy would be targeted at children.